The Search for the NET Terminal Gene: B-000
by drunkpencil
Summary: Set in the original Blame! manga story, it details an alternate adventure of Killy and his search to find the NET Terminal Gene.
1. Chapter 1: The Long Corridor

The metal corridor was long and dark. Layers of dust had settled on the floor, no one had been here for years. He walked forward. The dust muffled the sound of his steps. He watched it swirl around his boots, and then gently fall down. He was leaving behind prints, but it didn't matter. Walking was all that mattered now. Green numbers faded into his sight, overlaying the darkness in front of him. They were coordinates, reminding him there was still a long way to go.

Eventually, he reached the end of the corridor. It was much colder now, the temperature had fallen at least 10 degrees since he first entered. He looked at the wall in front of him, studying it carefully. The green numbers appeared again, flashing slowly - a hidden door? His retinal mode cycled automatically, scanning in all the usual wavelengths. Nothing. He touched the wall gently, his fingers trailing for any irregularities. The wall was perfectly smooth. A bit too smooth, actually. The wall must have been built after the corridor. Still, it was a dead end. He turned around and started back the way he came. Again, he watched the dust swirl around his boots. No, this would take too long. Facing the wall, from a distance, he took out his handgun. A rare beam weapon, that few possessed. He aimed at the center of the wall. There was a blinding white flash, followed by a loud booming noise. The wall collapsed into it self, and hot bubbling metal poured down to the floor. He walked forward, carefully stepping over the wall's sizzling remains.

There was no dust on this side. Indeed, the metal panels were glittering in the darkness: condensed water droples covering everything. The temperature had dropped to almost zero degrees. He looked into the darkness in front of him, switching to thermal vision. He saw no hidden suprises.

Almost a week later, he had reached the real end of the corridor. Unfortunately, the temperature had dropped far below the freezing point, and most of his internal systems were functioning poorly. His bio-mechanically enhanced body now solely relied on miniature machines carrying oxygen and nutrients to his organic parts. They were embedded into his bloodstream, warming the frozen blood as they passed through his veins. Soon, they would go out as well, if he didn't find any power source to recharge his internal batteries. As if this wasn't enough, somwehere along the corridor he had slipped on ice, and broken his left arm as well. However, in the freezing cold, he could barely feel any pain at all, and so he stood, shivering at the end of the long corridor. It had ended in a massive expansive tunnel. Embedded into the end of this tunnel was massive steel door, covered in faded writing: "B-001".

It took him an entire day to break the door's encryption codes. The neccessary algorithms were not present in his memory banks, and by the end of the day he had tried over a million different encoding schemes. "Finally," he said, his voice hoarse and weak. The steel door panels slid apart effortlessly, and white light filled the tunnel, briefly blinding him.

Inside was a massive cylindrical room, stretching high above and below, with a large glass globe in the center. Floating inside the globe was a female form, shadowed by entangled wires and tubes slithering across her body. She was slowly bobbing up and down in purple liquid, and occasionaly a bubble would form, vanishing into the top part of the globe. He traced the metal platform half-way around the room until he reached a bridge. Walking across it, he arrived at a computer panel. It activated upon his touch, and the computer screens came alive, flashing brightly and filling the room with sharp beeping noises.

The female specimen was still alive, kept in suspended animation for 99 years. Her biological history showed she had been admitted in a heavily wounded state, and the globe machine had repaired and replaced almost her entire body with pseudo-organic flesh and muscle. This process had been completed about 40 years ago, the remainding time she had just slept. He browsed further, searching her DNA information. Various mutations had taken place over the years, but her DNA was still relatively pure. More importantly, the genes containing the key to biological network interfacing was still there. This was the one.

This was the one he had searched for. The first human capable of directly uploading her consciousness to a shared neural net. For her it was the gift of immortality, but for others, the greatest curse ever to befall humanity. Everything had begun with her, and everyhing had ended with her. The loss of her genetic code had proven to be a fatal blow to the inhabitants of the megacity, once the mutation viruses had began to spread, and the silicon lifeforms started taking over. According to his memory banks, her unconsciouss body had been smuggled here by a team of desperate scientists at the outbreak of the war.

It was all here, everything he needed. He finished browsing her medical history and began the revival process. The globe drained quickly of its purple liquid, flushing it out around the globe and down below. The wires and tubes connected to her body popped out and shaked around violently. The glass almost broke at one point, as one of the tubes kept slamming into it. Another tube caught the specimen's throat and coiled around it tightly. She was going to suffocate. He aborted the revival process and activated the emergency opening system. The glass globe split in two, each halve sliding into its metal housing above and below. The liquid burst out of its glass prison and rained over him. It felt warm. He ran to the globe, his left arm flailing limply as he did. Crawling through the mess of wires, he began manually disconnecting them from her body and pulled her out. She was very pale, with smooth skin, and light of weight, but unfortunately, he slid on the wet floor and fell. It almost knocked him out cold, but he was still holding her as her eyes started to open.

"Hello," he said akwardly, staring at her naked body. She was quite attractive, and her green eyes glowed with energy, but they were unfocused. "Can you hear me?" he said more confidently. Her eyes darted back and forth a bit, and then rolled back into her skull. Shit, he thought, this long in suspended animation may have damaged her brain. He then suddenly realized she was clinging to him, shivering violently. Numbers appeared in his sight, telling him the room was still very cold. He had almost forgotten, the liquid that had rained upon him felt so warm in comparison. Aborting the revival process had effectively jumpstarted her heart, her blood had barely had any time to flow before it would start to solidify in the cold. He slung her over one shoulder, and walked back across the bridge. He scanned the surrounding area for any doors or exits and found what appeared to be a small storage compartment, opposite to the side he came in. The door was frozen shut, so he blasted it of its hinges with his gun. This briefly activated some sort of alarm, but he was able to override the system using the same codes as he used to enter the globe room.

Inside the storage compartment was a small bed, some blankets and boxes containing foodstuffs, syringes and various medical equipment. He layed her down into the bed, and wrapped all the blankets he could find around her. The door panel had a built-in thermostat and so he cranked it up considerably, immediately fogging the window on the door. He turned on the lights as well, and connected his neck to a power outlet by pulling out long wires hidden below his skin, popping them out of fake birthmarks. It didn't take long before he had fully recharged his internal power source and could initiate auto-repair on his arm and the rest of his body. He looked over to the shivering girl one last time, beforing passing out from exhaustion.

Several hours later, he was artifically awoken by his own subconsciouss alarm system. It had detected movement nearby, and as he reached for his gun he realized it was only the girl turning around in the bed. As numerous numbers and letters scrolled down over his eyes, performing system checks and telling him he was O.K. he let out a sigh of relief and got up, feeling his newly repaired arm. Good as new. He walked towards the girl and sat down in the bed, feeling her forehead. She was still cold, but it wasn't life-threatening anymore. The room was relatively warm now, cozy even. He looked around in the boxes and found some vita-shots and high nutrition bars. There were some bottles of purified water too, which was rare in these days. He ate some bars, drank a bottle of water and injected vita-shot into the arm of the girl to give her body some well needed nutrition and stimulants. Her immune system was probably weak after so much time in suspended animation, but seeing how most her body had been replaced with bionic parts over the years this probably wouldn't be that much of an issue. She complained a bit when the needle pierced her skin, but didn't wake up. So he decided to watch over here until she did. A couple of hours more, and he was staring into those green eyes again.

"Wh-where..." She stuttered, barely audible. He pondered how to answer that question, but before he could, the globe room's alarm system went off again. Three alarms in one day? He grimaced. What ever activated it this time, it had changed the codes to shut it off. The girl in the bed tugged at his suit, still expecting an aswer. "Shut up," he responded, and threw some clothes to her. "Take these on," he continued, while moving towards the door. "And don't move."

The alarm siren ringed in his ears as he peered out of the door's window. The lights had gone out in the globe room, and he knew there was something hiding in that darkness. He flickered quickly through his optical filters, and his thermal vision revealed a large hulking mass of metal giving off a familiar heat signature. A Guardian... Fuck. It noticed him immediately, and directed two gun barrels at him. The barrels began spinning rapidly, jolts of electricity arcing around the shiny metal. He watched as the heat built up inside the guns, turning into two terrifying red dots in his thermal vision. Would the door hold? He threw himself to the floor, forgetting about the girl in the bed.

The bullets rained down like hellfire, each round shaking the door violently. It was nosy, it was horribly noisy. The door screeched and complained. Bits of it fell off continously, thudding heavily against the ground. The window blasted into the room, accompanied by an ice-cold gust of wind. He turned on his back and kicked himself from the door, sliding through pieces of sparkling glass. Holding his gun with both hands, he shot through the window, hoping to hit something useful. There was a slight pause in the bulletstorm coming from the other end, allowing dust and debris to settle down nicely. Suddenly, he heard a swooshing sound. He had only just realized what it meant when two small missiles hit the door and ended it once and for all. The explosive force completely ripped it apart and sent burning metal flying everywhere. He had to act fast, the next volley would kill him outright.

Coughing and shivering, he got up from the floor and ran out the smoking hole that was once a door. Surprised, the Guardian reared on its two legs, lowering its missile battery. He shot of a couple of rounds into it as he dashed behind the control panel to the globe. By now, pretty much everything was on fire and his thermal vision was useless. He switched it off and gritted his teeth. The Guardian fired its barrel guns again, creating a staggering amount of bullet holes in the control panel. He raised his gun above the ruined computers, and fired blindly. He seemed to hit something, and darted out from hiding. The Guardian's legs were crippled, it was lying uselessly on the floor, flailing its guns in all directions. He aimed at its head and fired again. Its metal head melted away revealing a small chamber containing some sort of brain in a vat. The tissue looked damaged and tortured, with several missing bits and electrical wirings sprouting out everywhere. As he ended its life, he could have sworn he heard it scream.


	2. Chapter 2: The Maze

Another dark corridor, made of more dirty metal panels. He sighed. How many corridors had he walked in? He tried tallying them up, but got bored when he reached over thousands. It was pointless to complain anyway: the megacity consisted mostly of megastructures, which were mostly just corridors from one old computer panel to the other. Yet, this corridor was particularly annoying. It was part of some gigantic maze, probably hundreds of cubic kilometres big. Why something like this was built, was beyond his understanding. It was obviously here to protect something, but why go through all this trouble when you can just mass produce robot guards. He mapped out his path so far and his internal systems produced a cube of corridors in his vision. At least he had started out in a corner. A top corner, in fact. He chose a direction at random and started walking.

As he traversed the three-dimensional maze he came across several interesting areas. In one room was a huge tower, glittering with sparks and lights. It was several hundred meters high, and fashioned in dark metal. It was probably used to broadcast signals across the current megastructure he was in, judging by its incredible humming sound. There was usually one of these in every major area, but he was surprised to find one that was still functioning. He had left it intact. In another room he found a rather aggressive tribe of people, suffering from various mutations. Their leader had three arms, each of them holding some ancient gun. It didn't end well, but then it usually never did with these lost pockets of humanity. He might have left them leaderless, but some of them didn't look too unhappy about that. In yet another area he was forced to walk up and down the same set of stairs fourteen times because the gravitational orientation kept changing every hour or so.

Deep in his thoughts, he managed to bump into a wall. He brought up the cube overlay again and analyzed the various paths he had been taking. A couple of dead-ends later, he was back on track, aiming for the very center of the maze. In theory, he could blast his way through, but then he would risk using up all the energy of his gun. Also, he might attract unwanted attention. He doubted anything would willingly follow him this far into the maze, but it wouldn't be the first time he would be hunted down after causing a scene. For instance, in saving that girl from the cryochamber only weeks past, he attracted several squadrons of Guardians eventually chasing him out that megastructure entirely. It was unfortunate that she died. He had still to meet a human which could survive a metal bar lodged inside their chest. In retrospect, he should have told her to hide beneath the bed.

She wouldn't be the first one to go, however. How many was it? Just in the past decade he had found at least 19 B-series rooms. All of them containing her, or rather, a clone of her. The first time was in B-092. He had been all excited, his grand quest nearing completion. Unfortunately, her DNA was entirely corrupted. The globe unit had failed only 5 years after insertion of the clone. The others were mostly either dead before he got there, corrupted as well, missing, or died on the way back to his safehouse. At one point he considered bringing a dead body back, but it would never have worked. Uploading into the unified neural network required a consciouss specimen. Also, he had no idea where the terminals where located.

Their green eyes usually bothered him, but the last one had some special glow in them. He almost felt sorry when he found her in the bed. He reasoned the numbering was the clone number. She was number one, so number zero would be... the original. Unfortunately, he had been unable to find this location. Most the of B-series rooms he had pulled off an old databank room before it shutdown completely; he had only been able to download 20 of them before it was too late. Although he had no idea what it meant at the time, which probably suggested some sort of memory alteration or corruption on his part, he figured it at least upped his chances of completing his mission. It was all a growing mystery. Who was he, why could he only remember his mission, what was the point of cloning her, and more importantly, are there other people with the gene just wandering off somewhere.

Several weeks later, he had finally reached the center of the maze. He stepped out a corridor and into a ridiculously large room. Even at maximum zoom his enhanced eyes could not detect any ceiling or bottom. He was on a bridge leading straight into a large box, made of pure white panels. Judging by the contents of the air around him, there had probably never been anyone else here in a long, long time. The air was completely devoid of any oxygen. There was probably no circulation into any other parts of the maze, and the still, dank air tasted sour. This would be a problem. He could only hold his breath for so long.

The door behind him, leading back into the maze, locked immediately when he stepped out onto the bridge. He moved hurriedly to the other end and surveyed the huge white box. There were no visible ridges or entrances, and so he flicked through his optical filters scanning for any hidden way in. He halted somewhere in the UV-range, which revealed large writing in front of him: "B-027". A touch panel appeared dead centre on the wall blinking in the same range of light. He went through the usual process in trying to figure out the entrance code, again finding that his memory banks came up empty. The last time it had taken him a day, but unfortunately, he could not hold his breath that long. Oh well, this was his last chance anyway, he thought, and the reached for his gun. He had no other data on B-series locations, and finding intact databanks containing such valuable information was not exactly an everyday occurence. Far from it. Realizing that he might die here, without ever fulfilling his mission, he decided to not give a fuck about setting off any alarm systems. He took a couple of steps back, and blasted the box wall repeatedly until its white panels started bubbling angrily as they melted. Ofcourse, all kinds of alarms went off as he did. After a couple of minutes he could discern an entrance.

Ignoring all the sirens, he stepped into the B-027 globe room. Unfortunately, the security systems had covered the globe in defensive metal screens, and the computer panel was entirely unresponsive. Sighing, he fired his gun at the bottom and upper halves housing the globe and shot the entire thing loose. It wobbled unsteadily for a moment as all kinds of tubes and wirings broke and then the globe started rolling towards him. Actually, this might make things easier, he thought. Side-stepping around the globe, he started pushing it out of the room and guiding it out of the room. With his lungs screaming for oxygen, he blasted his way back into the maze and started backtracking, the large globe rolling and bumping its way through the corridors. If this didn't attract any attention, nothing would. Sure enough, he soon detected several Guardians running behind him. They were closing the gap quickly, and at every turn he took out his gun and fired down the corridor, attempting to destroy the ceiling and block the path. Somehow, they always found a way around.

At one point, he realized he would have to fight them. He was making slow progress pushing the globe around the maze, especially since some corridors were far too tight and he had to improvise by blowing through into other parts. Goind up was out the question, so he had to make for one of the unkown corners of the cube maze downwards. This meant he got trapped in dead-ends all the time and the Guardians would eventually reach him. At the top of a spiraling staircase one of them reached him. It came running down the corner of a corridor, crumpling the metal panels on the floor with every step. He pushed the globe down the stairs at a calculated angle, and watched it accelerate down the stairs, kept in check from free falling down by small railings.

The ensuing firefight with the Guardian ended quickly as he got a lucky shot in and destroyed its targetting systems on its shoulder pads. It countered by spending all of its ammunition wildly down the corridor, but he hid safely behind the wall to the entrance of the spiral stair room. As it emptied out, he stepped in front of it and placed a perfect shot right in its head, blowing it apart violently. Bits of brain and blood, coupled with several computer chips, filled the corridor in a rain of glorious victory. It was soon, however, replaced by its companions firing missiles towards him. With no time to spare he jumped down the spiral stair case, landing uncomfortably on a railing and sliding down into the darkness beneath.

As he raced backwards down the stairs, his slick black suit sliding effortlessly down the railing, the remaining Guardians followed him. These ones were pretty advanced, with jump packs installed enabling them to fly down the stairs for short burts of time. In fact, they were almost as quick as him. They were obviously built for high-speed pursuit in a three-dimensional maze. With one hand steadying his decent on the railing, and the other on the gun, he fired upwards in the spiral room, sometimes hitting his pursuers. Mostly he just destroyed the walls around him, but sometimes the falling debris would take one out. They would crash into the central pillar of the room and explode violently as the jump pack if the jump pack got crushed in the impact. Although the room was dark, the continous muzzle flashes lit up the room like fireworks, allowing him to track their movements somewhat. He kept firing all the time to increase his speed with the added recoil, but two of them managed to get behind him with their jump packs and they destroyed the railing behind him. He had to jump off, and quite literally, derailed considerably. He crashed horrendously into the wall behind him, breaking several bones. A couple of Guardians followed, smashing into the wall next to him, and the resulting impact sent a rolling impulse in the metal platings of the wall boucing him straight off and into the pillar. This cracked his skull open and he lost vision on one eye. All his internal systems were working overtime, and he was bleeding heavily from pretty much everywhere. He could barely make out what was happening around him as the two flanking Guardians moved in for the kill. Two others came zooming down shortly afterwards to join them, encircling him, with all gun barrels pointing straight to his chest, He spat out some broken teeth and raised his own gun towards them, preparing for a final stand.

As the gun barrels started revving up, the Guardians seem to scream at him. It was a horrible sound, a sort of hollow but screeching metal-on-metal grinding. Sparks went flying everywhere as the increasing rotational speed heated up the weaponry. He suddenly recalled the green eyes of the last clone. Like the barrels pointing to him, they too were filled with energy. Incidentally, this gave him an idea. He fired a shot at one of the guns of the leftmost Guardian, and by the greatest stroke of luck the beam bounced of the rotating barrels and hit its other gun. This created some sort of chain reaction since the beam seemed to suck out the rotational energy with each bounce back and forth. Just before the other Guardians started firing the beam bounced completely off the barrels and hit its Guardian straight in the body chassis, resulting in a severe systems failure as it was blown to bits. This threw the other's aim off and they missed him completely. In the resulting chaos he crawled up on a part of the destroyed body chassis and pushed himself down the stairs, essentially sliding down the steps with it. The ride was bumpy and horribly painful, but at least he was making headway. As the smoke and debris cleared, the remaining Guardians soon realized he had escaped and followed down into the darkness.

Finally, he reached the bottom of the room. The globe had crashed into a wall and gotten stuck in it. Its protective screening was cracked here and there, but since there was no liquid pouring out of it he reasoned the girl inside was still intact. He positioned himself awkwardly next to the globe, trying to use one of the sides for cover. It took a couple of seconds before he could hear the remaining Guardians rushing down to greet him, but when they did, he was ready for them. They came in a line, one behind the other. He upped the power of the gun and placed a perfect shot, dead center in the head of the first Guardian. The beam went straight trough its head and into the other one behind it. This caused the third to crash into the two in front of it and it toppled over and fell to the ground, its metal body screeching as it came towards him. The resulting sparks burned his face, but he fought through the fiery pain and shot it dead as it approached, barely finding the time to roll away from the impact with the globe. This ofcourse, was all that the protective shielding on the globe could take. It cracked open like an egg shell and shattered the globe inside. The girl fell limply into the chaos of the outside world, wires and tubes disconnecting violently from her body. By the time she hit the ground she was all bloodied and filled with scars. Her hair almost caught fire from the burning purple liquid which had filled the globe, ignited by the sparks around it. He grabbed her quickly and, with great effort, halted away into the next room, carrying her wounded body.


	3. Chapter 3: An Ecounter

There are few places in the Megacity which can be considered safe. Most are inhabited by dangerous beasts, which have long since forgotten their name or purpose. Day and night they stalk the metal halls of the great constructs known as Megastructures. They only live for the next meal, hiding in the steely darkness, ever honing their predatory skills. Occasionally, one of them will remember something. A face, perhaps. The face of some long lost friend, from some long lost past. They usually shake it off, regarding it as some hallucination. Those who do not, however, become obsessed with that memory. They leave the confines of their homes and journey out into the world, looking for an answer. Usually, that answer is death.

He stared in into the strange creature's eyes, unblinking. They were black as the darkest night, sucking in all the light around him. He felt drawn to the eyes, as if they held secrets, truths which he must know. Maybe lowering his gun wasn't such a bad idea. Heck, why not give the creature his gun? He shook his head abruptly, suddenly aware of his own thoughts. The creature was huge. Its entire body was covered in some thick brown fur, like that of a bear, but shaped as a mantis. Long, sharp claws portruded from its upper limbs, threatening to slice the very air. His heart was beating fast. He felt weak. Beads of sweat dripped down into his mouth, and he could taste his own fear. And then the creature was gone, slipping back into the darkness, as if it had never existed. He gathered his strength again, wondering what had just happened. The girl on his shoulder was still unconsciouss, but at least he had managed to stop the bleeding. She was in a stable condition now, and if he could find some safe place to rest, it might even stay that way. He moved on, gripping his gun tightly.


End file.
